The Hazards of Anti-Slavery Journalism

Abolitionists organizing the battle against slavery during the 1830s
quickly mastered the potentials of the penny press and the post office
in their campaign to compel Americans to examine their consciences
about the South’s peculiar institution. The movement
published millions of broadsides and introduced fiery newspapers
advancing the cause. Its emotional exhortations convinced thousands of
ordinary Americans to voice their anger at human bondage by sending
nearly a million petitions through the mails, beseeching Congress to
abolish slavery. Federal legislators had already passed a gag rule
prohibiting such discussion. Former President John Quincy Adams, now a
congressman, often raised the petitions on the floor, forcing
opponents into embarrassing stipulations to table the
letters. Undeterred anti-slavery citizens continued the cascade of
pleas against any enlargement of the servile system. The movement
survived violence, too, when anti-abolitionist rioters burned presses
and killed one editor in Illinois in 1837. White editors William Lloyd
Garrison and David Lee Child are widely known for their brave
commitment to abolitionist publishing. Other than Frederick Douglass,
far less is known about the courageous black journalists who strived
to extinguish slavery.

David Ruggles, an African-American printer in New York City during the
1830s, was the prototype for black activist journalists of his
time. During his 20-year career, Ruggles poured out hundreds of
articles, published at least five pamphlets and operated the first
African-American press. His magazine, Mirror of Liberty,
intermittently issued between 1838 and 1841, is widely recognized as
the first periodical published by a black American. Ruggles also
displayed unyielding courage against constant violence, which
eventually destroyed his health and career. His story reveals the
valor required of a black editor struggling against the pitiless
hatred of the pro-slavery forces and the yawning indifference of most
Americans. Ruggles’ valiant work ran the spectrum of the work of
journalists. He was an agent, writer, printer, publisher and
subject. He was in fact America’s first black working
journalist. His career epitomized the fusion of professionalism and
activism, so characteristic of later black journalists, that would
propel him to the center of racial conflict.

Ruggles was born in norwich, Connecticut, in 1810, the eldest of seven
children of free black parents. His father, David Sr., was a
blacksmith. His mother, Nancy, was a noted caterer and a founding
member of the local Methodist church. Ruggles was educated at
religious charity schools in Norwich. By the age of 17, he was in New
York, first working as a mariner; in 1828 he opened a grocery shop. At
first he sold liquor. Observing, as did other black abolitionists, the
damage done to the black community by drink, he converted to the
temperance movement. He advocated it in his advertisements in
Freedom’s Journal, the nation’s first black newspaper,
which was published by Samuel Eli Cornish, a black Presbyterian
minister.

By the early 1830s, Ruggles became involved in the growing
anti-slavery movement in New York. White radicals, disenchanted by
reform measures, now joined blacks demanding the immediate end of
slavery. His grocery shop at 1 Cortlandt Street was the nation’s
first black bookstore until a mob destroyed it. In 1833, the
Emancipator, an abolitionist weekly, appointed him as its agent to
canvass for subscribers throughout the Middle Atlantic states. By
1834, Ruggles was also writing regularly. That year, he published his
own pamphlet entitled The Extinguisher Extinguished: or David
M. Reese, M.D. Used Up. a satirical screed attacking the
leading local proponent of the American Colonization Society. This
organization, which roused fiery anger in Ruggles and other blacks,
argued that the only solution for America’s racial problems was
to ship all free blacks to Africa. However implausible this sounds
today, the plan was very popular among whites in the antebellum United
States. Yet blacks understood, Ruggles thundered, that the plan did
not threaten the future of slavery. His self-published booklet was the
first imprint by an African American.

Ruggles used his own press the next year in his publication Abrogation
of the seventh commandment, by the American Churches, which contended
that Northern white women should shun their Southern sisters, whom, he
argued, acquiesced in the violation of God’s commandments by
letting their husbands keep enslaved black women as
mistresses. Ruggles beseeched Northern women to consider whether they
would tolerate the adoption of a system which would recognize as
their domestic servant the spurious off-spring of their own husbands,
brothers, and sons. He lashed out at Southern women as
inexcusably criminal for disregarding the sexual exploitation
of enslaved black women. Ruggles’ jeremiad foreshadowed similar
developments in the nascent feminist movement and revealed growing
personal splits between North and South.

Ruggles believed deeply that newspapers were necessary tools of anyone
opposed to the evil of slavery. He enunciated his beliefs in a series
of six articles published in the Emancipator early in 1835. Ruggles
was worried that a lack of subscriptions from blacks might doom
anti-slavery journalism. He urged African Americans to do their duty
by supporting the Emancipator and other anti-slavery journals because
they were the most effective weapons against servitude. In a nation
where few blacks could vote and none could hold office, he remarked,
freedom of the press was blacks’ most precious liberty. Costing
only a few cents a copy, the newspapers were an essential and
inexpensive means to combat slavery. For blacks to ignore their
trumpets of freedom was to display the personal degradation of
enslavement. No one in America, he contended with remarkable
prescience, could be neutral on the moral issue of slavery. Blacks
and sympathetic whites had a moral obligation to support abolitionist
newspapers.

Ruggles raised more than his pen in his personal war against the
slavocracy. In 1835, he and several other young black activists
organized the New York Committee of Vigilance. Manhattan was then
swarming with kidnappers, agents of Southern slave owners whose
chattel had fled north to freedom. With the help of New York City
magistrates, kidnappers seized blacks off the street, held a quick
hearing to prove their identity and within a matter of hours
forced their unfortunate victims onto boats headed for Southern
ports. Angered by this practice, Ruggles and the rest of the Committee
of Vigilance openly confronted slave catchers, demanded that the city
government grant jury trials to fugitives and offered legal assistance
to them. Backed by the New York Manumission Society, whose members
included the lawyer William Jay, son of Chief Justice John Jay, the
Committee of Vigilance proved highly effective in protecting the
rights of local blacks. On several occasions, Ruggles went to private
homes where enslaved blacks were hidden and informed the servants that
they were actually free. In case anyone missed these activities,
Ruggles often published such adventures in abolitionist newspapers
such as the Emancipator and The Liberator.

One of Ruggles’ most controversial methods was to demand the
arrest of white sea captains he suspected of trading in
slaves. Illegal since 1808, slave trading still occurred
clandestinely. Ruggles’ unmasking of these transactions nearly
cost him his freedom.

In December 1836, a Portuguese vessel captained by Juan Evangelista de
Souza arrived in New York harbor. Ruggles heard from wharfside sources
that the captain held five blacks in slavery and intended to head
south to sell them. Under a writ of habeas corpus, Ruggles demanded
that the five enslaved blacks be held in a local jail until a hearing
could be held on their status. He also sought successfully the arrest
of Captain de Souza on charges of slave trading. This was the second
time Ruggles had a white man arrested on such charges. His boldness
infuriated his opponents. While the case wound through the courts, de
Souza, who was free on bail, and a local police officer named Tobias
Boudinot and a slave catcher named D.D. Nash decided to take matters
into their own hands. Late on the night of December 28, 1836, they
arrived at Ruggles’ home at 67 Lispenard Street. They knocked
loudly and asked to speak to David. When Ruggles told them to come
back in the morning, they tried to break down his door. Ruggles
escaped and returned later with a watchman. At a hearing at the police
station, Ruggles exposed his assailants’ plot to grab him and
put him on a vessel headed for Savannah, Georgia, where he would be
sold into slavery. Frustrated, Nash tried to arrest Ruggles on a
specious writ for any black who looked like Jesse or Abraham, generic
names for slaves. If it hadn’t been for the help of his white
allies among local lawyers, Ruggles doubtless would have been shipped
off into slavery. Sometime later, Nash proclaimed—during a
mobbing of a white abolitionist named John Hopper in
Savannah—that he would give a thousand dollars if he had that
nigger named Ruggles in my hands as he is the leader of [the
abolitionists].

Undeterred by these threats, Ruggles continued to publish his articles
and pamphlets, writing dozens of pieces for newspapers throughout the
Northeast. He was also the most visible conductor on the Underground
Railroad. Ruggles claimed to have helped 400 fugitive slaves during
the 1830s. One such escaped slave later became one of the most famous
Americans of the 19th century. In his classic autobiography, Frederick
Douglass recalled his dire straits just after he fled north to freedom
in New York City in late September 1838. Though exhilarated by his
newfound freedom, Douglass was terrified of slave catchers. The young
fugitive was broke, lonely and spent several nights sleeping amidst
empty barrels on the wharves. Fortunately, he met a sailor who took
him to the print shop of David Ruggles, who sheltered him and welcomed
him to freedom with great celebration. A few days later, Frederick was
married to Anna Murray, a free black woman, in Ruggles’ shop in
a ceremony led by James W.C. Pennington, a former fugitive turned
Presbyterian minister. Immediately after the wedding, Douglass and his
new wife traveled to New Bedford, Massachusetts, armed with a letter
of recommendation from Ruggles and a $5 bill. In just a few years
Douglass became one of America’s most famous abolitionist
orators. Today, his autobiography is read by tens of thousands of
college students and is considered a classic of American literature.

By the time Douglass met him, Ruggles had become one of the most
notorious black abolitionists in the United States. A look at a
remarkable incident, which took place right around the time Douglass
arrived in New York City, reveals the energy and courage demanded of
Ruggles as he used his pen and life to fight against slavery. The Darg
Case, as it was called, caused a furor in New York’s newspapers
in the autumn of 1838. Its proceeding exposed the extreme dangers for
Ruggles and other anti-slavery warriors.

New York City residents in the 1830s were deeply divided over the
future of America’s peculiar institution. It was naturally
abhorred by the city’s 16,000 black residents, many of whom had
been only recently emancipated by legislative decree ending slavery in
New York state in 1827. Much of the city’s elite also worked
against it, though by different means. Some elite urbanites favored
the strategy of the American Colonization Society, with its plan of
sending free blacks back to Africa. Others, notably the Jay family,
preferred black self-help efforts at home and donated money to the New
York Manumission Society and its principal agency, the African Free
School. Though the school had declined recently, it was the alma mater
of the city’s black elite. A more radical wing of the
Manumission Society sided with immediatists—anti-slavery
activists such as William Lloyd Garrison and the Tappan brothers,
founders of Dun and Bradstreet—who wanted slavery ended now, not
later.

One of the most active Manumission Society members with this view was
Barney Corse, who, for more than 10 years, had helped self-emancipated
or fugitive slaves come north and helped local blacks protect their
freedom against kidnappers. Joining him was the venerable Isaac
T. Hopper, a Quaker abolitionist since the 1780s, and Ruggles. This
trio had successfully battled city officials and kidnappers on several
occasions. At other times, when they lost, Ruggles used his press to
blast this unfair system. Some situations were uncomplicated; others,
such as the Darg Case, were complex. The facts, as they came out in
the subsequent trial, were as follows: On August 25, 1838, John
P. Darg, a Virginia slaveholder, arrived in New York City with his
slave Thomas Hughes. The issue of Southerners bringing their human
chattel to a free state was under intense negotiation between the
governors of New York and Virginia, but Darg apparently felt confident
about the status of his servant. But a few days later Hughes came to
Hopper’s house, seeking refuge. The Quaker, however, was
initially reluctant and asked Hughes to leave his home. The next day,
the New York Sun, the most vitriolic of the penny press, published a
notice offering a reward for the return of Hughes and the $7,000 or
$8,000 he had taken with him. Hopper, Corse and perhaps Ruggles served
as go-betweens for Darg and Hughes. The slave no longer had all the
money, having given some of it to others who helped him escape and a
portion to some local gamblers.

Corse and Ruggles decided that returning the cash was moral but
turning over Hughes was not. They convinced Darg to free Hughes
provided that he gave back as much money as he took. When the sum
turned out to be far less than Darg demanded, the slave master ordered
Corse and Ruggles arrested for grand larceny. Corse quickly found
bail, but Ruggles was jailed for two days with common criminals, even
though he had not actually been charged with anything. After that
incident, a caricature of the three, entitled The Disappointed
Abolitionists, was published, suggesting that they were really
interested in the reward and, rather than trying to free slaves, were
setting up an extortion ring to prey on unwary masters.

The case remained newsworthy over the next few months. In October, a
group of black citizens honored Ruggles by giving him a cane with a
golden knob. Sadly, the struggle was taking its toll on the valiant
Ruggles. Now only 28 years old, he was nearly blind and was afflicted
with severe bowel disorders. All of his money and time went into the
movement, so he often was homeless. Worse afflictions were on the way,
and they came from a surprising source.

In 1837, samuel eli cornish, aided by Philip A. Bell, resurrected his
black newspaper and renamed it the Colored American. Ruggles quickly
became a regular contributor. The editors in turn frequently wrote
approvingly of his actions. But in early 1839, a terrible dispute
arose that ended Ruggles’ career in New York City. Hearing
rumors that a black hotelier named John Russell was hiding captive
blacks before they were transported south, Ruggles, without
Cornish’s knowledge, inserted an article in the Colored American
accusing the innkeeper of helping kidnappers. Russell sued the
newspaper, Ruggles and Cornish for libel and won a judgment of
$600—which nearly bankrupted the weekly journal. Furious,
Cornish attacked Ruggles in print. Although wealthy benefactors soon
paid the libel award, Cornish campaigned to have Ruggles driven out of
the movement. One method was to demand that Ruggles explain every cash
expenditure of the Committee of Vigilance. After a careful accounting,
it appeared that the committee’s funds were short $400. Broken
in health and deeply hurt by Cornish’s accusations, Ruggles was
forced to resign his post as secretary of the committee. Before doing
so, he published his last imprint in New York City, A Plea for a Man
and a Brother, in which he tried to refute Cornish’s
indictments. In truth, the more conservative Cornish and his many
allies had tired of Ruggles’ radical methods and sought less
confrontational means to fight slavery.

Although he still published regularly in white abolitionist journals,
Ruggles’ plight was desperate. Now blind and seriously ill from
several diseases, he left New York for Massachusetts. His father died
in 1841. Fearful that Ruggles might soon follow him to the grave,
William C. Nell and other Boston blacks honored the ailing man with a
dinner and a gift of badly needed funds. They proclaimed him a great
soldier in the war against slavery. That winter, noted author Lydia
Maria Child and her husband, David Lee Child, editor of the National
Anti-Slavery Standard, arranged for Ruggles to join a radical commune
in Northampton, Massachusetts. Ruggles, grateful for their help and
anxious to find a cure for his many ailments, became first an adherent
and later a doctor of hydropathy, a water cure regimen then sweeping
the nation. By 1845, Ruggles established the first water cure hospital
in the United States. He continued writing a dozen or more articles on
abolitionism annually as well as publishing in water-cure
journals. Just as his new career soared to new heights, Ruggles
tragically succumbed to a severe bowel infection on December 18,
1849. His family came to retrieve his body and buried him in their
plot in Norwich. As the anti-slavery movement mourned Ruggles, William
Lloyd Garrison summarized his many achievements and plaintively noted
his biography is yet to be written. One hundred fifty years
later, that fact is still true, but Ruggles may be remembered for his
fusion of committed journalism and fearless activism.

Graham Russell Hodges, professor of history at Colgate
University, is the author of Root and Branch: African
Americans in New York and East Jersey, 1613-1863. He is
writing a biography of David Ruggles.